


smoke in a stillwater pond

by TheJGatsby



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Jedi Rey, Pining, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, author made only cursory visits to wookieepedia for facts, ben and rey make democracy happen, rey is also the queen, screw the first order! we're better than that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 21:05:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13689795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJGatsby/pseuds/TheJGatsby
Summary: "I- I want to go with you, Ben, I want to make that vision come true, but if your plan is to just… create another Empire-”“Absolutely not,” he says, firm, finally looking over at her. “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, not precisely, but- whatever it is, Rey, I swear, all I want is to build something that can- something that will make you proud.”(Ben and Rey rebuild the galaxy, and they're determined to learn from the past.)





	smoke in a stillwater pond

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LarirenShadow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LarirenShadow/gifts).



> Prompt fill for LarirenShadow: Supreme Leader Kylo who is reforming the galaxy for good with his consort Rey who is using her status to learn everything she can about the Jedi. They're trying to reform the galaxy and not make the same mistakes.  
> Thanks to smols-darklighter on tumblr for proofing and edits  
> The prompt was a bit out of my wheelhouse but it was a lot of fun trying something new and exploring a whole avenue of fic I don't have a lot of experience with! I hope you enjoy it  
> Title from Kings by Tribe Society

Rey looks between his hand and the window, where her friends are running for their lives, cornered. The vision sits heavy at the front of her mind, the two of them together, strong, and she knows that if she chooses this, that golden future is achievable, that she can have that, but her heart is screaming for her friends.

He catches her conflict, and for a moment his jaw tightens, and she thinks he might shout again, but everything seems to go out of him abruptly and his eyes fall closed as his hand drops and he turns his face away from her.

“But you love your friends,” he says, tinged with bitterness.

“I can’t just let them die,” she pleads with him, because she doesn’t  _ want _ to walk away from him, she wants what she saw when they touched hands, but another dull explosion reaches her ears from the fleet outside the window, and she itches to bolt.

“Go,” he says, and he won’t look at her, and she can feel their bond stuttering, as if he’s struggling to shut her out. “Help them. I’ll- I can sabotage the cannons, buy time.”

Rey hesitates, but presses her lips together and nods. She’ll get the Resistance to safety and find her way back to him. They aren’t finished yet.

Before she can move, there’s a sound like the sky tearing apart, and a blinding flash of light, and Rey loses consciousness.

 

When she comes to, she’s sprawled on the floor next to Ben, and shakes him awake. He groans and stirs, blood tracking down his face from his hairline, and his arms are shaking as he tries to push himself up. Rey feels like she did that time her line snapped lowering her down in a hollowed-out star destroyer and she plummeted twenty feet to the sand, landing on her back and lying there struggling to draw breath for long minutes, every bone and muscle in her body rattled and bruised.

“What was that?” she asks, struggling to her knees.

“I don’t know,” he says, closing his eyes tightly and getting unsteady feet underneath him, jaw tense like he’s fighting pain, “something attacked the ship, it-“

“What  _ happened  _ here?” asks a new voice from close to the elevator, slow footsteps carrying a tall, severe, red-haired man into the room as he looks around in confused, shocked distress, taking in the burning room and scattered bodies. Rey doesn’t miss the change in Ben’s posture as he approaches, the way he shifts into a fighting stance, even as he sways slightly, still shaken from the blast.

The man’s eyes land on Snoke’s top half where it came to rest at the foot of the dais, and he freezes. There’s a tense moment, and then his face contorts in rage and he wheels towards Rey, one hand moving across his body towards the opposite hip. “ _ You _ -“ he barks, teeth grit.

Before he can take a step, though, he’s jerked into the air, and Rey looks over at Ben to see his hand thrown out before him, curled into a claw, and the man’s hands come up to his throat as his feet swing wildly below him, scrambling for purchase. “Reconsider, General,” Ben snarls, and tightens his hand, making the general’s face go purple as he struggles. “The Supreme Leader is  _ dead _ .”

Rey frowns in confusion- of course he is, they can all see that, he’s chopped in half-

“Long… live-“ chokes out the general, “the Supreme Leader.”

Ben releases his hand abruptly, and when he stands a little straighter, head high, Rey realizes that she’s just witnessed a shift in power. Ben looks over his shoulder at Rey as the general collapses to the floor, and there’s something regal in the lines of his profile. A spark catches on the far wall, and for a moment he’s crowned by fire, imposing and powerful over Rey where she still kneels on the floor.

Rey hasn’t taken her eyes off the general, though, and as Ben moves towards her, she sees the general rise to his knees, still gasping for air, and reach for his blaster, and as soon as he points it towards Ben, her hand snaps out and summons the blaster to her, turning it easily in the air as it flies so that it’s pointing back at the general when she catches it.

“Long live the Supreme Leader,” Rey says, and shoots him.

 

They save the Resistance. Well, they don’t save it, so much as Ben orders a tactical retreat once it becomes clear that the explosion was a Resistance transport aiming itself at the  _ Supremacy _ and punching the hyperdrive in order to  _ slice the fucking ship in half _ .

Rey didn’t even know you could  _ do  _ that.

But the First Order scrambles, evacuating those that can be evacuated, and Ben and Rey board Snoke’s transport. She hesitates in the doorway.

“Ben, I….”

He doesn’t turn, but his shoulders go tense, his hand tightening on the back of the pilot’s chair. “If you’ve changed your mind,” he starts, strained.

“No!” Rey protests, her chest tight with anxiety. “No, I haven’t, I just… I don’t know what I’m agreeing to. What I’m joining. I- I want to go with you, Ben, I want to make that vision come true, but if your plan is to just… create another Empire-”

“Absolutely not,” he says, firm, finally looking over at her. His eyes are just as dark and piercing as they were in the throne room, and there’s a bruise starting to bloom on his forehead, half-covered by the mess of his hair, a trail of blood drying on his face opposite the scar she gave him. “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, not precisely, but- whatever it is, Rey, I swear, all I want is to build something that can- something that will make you proud.”

His words hit her like a stun bolt, and she gets that feeling again, the one he gives her without even seeming to try, like the universe has abruptly tilted on its axis to place her at the center, everything shifting orbit by sheer force of his focus.  _ Join me _ and  _ something that will make you proud _ \- he keeps putting her in the middle of all this, and it’s a heady feeling, one she’s not ready to give up. “Okay,” she says, stepping onto the transport. “We’ll build something better, then.”

His face relaxes, and the absence of scowl or frown seems like it could almost be the start of a smile. “Something better,” he assures her, and she closes the transport door behind her and settles into the co-pilot’s seat.

 

They set a course for a First-Order controlled planet near the edge of the core. Rey traces a finger across the star chart on the holoscreen in front of them, charting their path, ending at the tiny planet, just a small ways from Jakku. It’s the closest she’s been to home since she met Finn, which feels like years ago but in reality was only a handful of days. The realization makes her feel unmoored, briefly, as if this is all a wild trick or an intricate fever dream, and she’s going to wake up in the dusty, claustrophobic half-darkness of her walker and have to drag herself through the motions of her life all over again. On impulse, she reaches out to cover Ben’s hand with her own, and he startles at the touch, then pulls away, and she schools her face to hide the hurt. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye and watches him take off his glove, and then he reaches down and twines their fingers together, skin-to-skin, and the rush of comfort and relief is so heady she almost collapses.

“This is real,” he tells her, softly, as if reading her mind, which he may well be- it’s not as if she’s trying to keep him out. What would be the point? They’re on the same side, they’re allies, she doesn’t  _ want _ to hide things from him. He squeezes her hand, and she doesn’t doubt that he picked that thought up, too.

“I just never dreamed of anything like this,” she says, still staring at the map. “Sometimes I thought I would never leave Jakku, and now….”

“Now you may never go back,” he says. His thumb strokes at her knuckles, a cautious touch, and she returns it. “I hope you never have to.”

He means more than he says, and she hears it, too-  _ I hope you never have to be lonely again _ , he means.  _ I hope you never have to feel abandoned _ .

_ Not while you’re here _ , she thinks, and the rush of warmth she feels in the Force makes her bite back a smile.

 

Rey is staring out into hyperspace- it’s still novel, the endless whited-out expanse of it, knowing that beyond it whole worlds are passing by faster than she can blink- when Ben speaks up.

“I have an idea,” he says, carefully, “for what to do with the First Order.”

She turns away from the viewport to face him, sliding into the seat opposite him at the dejarik table. “All right.”

He drums his fingers on the table in front of him and chews on his lip, watching the holographic pieces fidget on the board for a moment before saying, “We do the reverse of what the Emperor did during the Clone Wars.”

“I don’t understand,” Rey says.

He takes a deep breath and launches into his explanation, moving beasts around the dejarik board as he speaks in what she’s sure is meant to be a demonstration. “During the Clone Wars, the Emperor- then the Chancellor- took advantage of widespread fear to consolidate his power, enacting legislation that took rights and powers away from senators and individual systems and reallocated them to himself. By the end of the war, he had hoarded enough political power and public opinion for himself that he could declare himself Emperor and not only would nobody be able to stop him, many people didn’t want to. He maintained that pattern through the first twenty years of the Empire, and then dissolved the Senate entirely.”

“Okay,” says Rey, only mostly understanding. Her education in history and politics is sorely lacking, acquired mostly from stories told in Niima outpost, so she recognizes some of  the events, but she can tell already that she has a lot of reading ahead of her. “So how are you going to reverse that?”

“It’s simple, really,” he explains, moving the Grimtaash piece to the center of the board and tapping his finger next to it. “Right now, the way everything is structured, all the power rests with me. I make the decisions on everything- it’s all delegated, of course, because I couldn’t possibly make  _ every _ decision, and Snoke barely ruled at all, because he was a despot’s despot and only cared about conquest and destruction.”

“What’s a despot? Never mind. Keep going.”

“A despot is a tyrant. A leader who takes all the power for themself and misuses it. Anyway.” He fishes a bit of chalk out of his pocket and draws a circle on the board next to the Grimtaash piece, with two little eyes and a line running up the side of its face. Rey recognizes him, the scar, and almost bites back her smile at the cartoonish representation, until she sees him glance at her out of the corner of his eye, and she doesn’t bother hiding her grin. “All the power rests with me, which is not ideal, because it never is. Power corrupts, and- it’s not ideal.” He sets up more pieces in rows in front of the Grimtaash. “The First Order is… corrupt, and evil. Ideologically, it’s nightmarish.”

“Then why were you part of it?” Rey asks, moving another game piece back and forth, looking up at him through her lashes.

Ben snorts. “I was tangentially associated with it. I was Snoke’s… his attack dog, never an officer or a leader, never involved. If it hadn’t been headed by Snoke, I would have had nothing to do with it. There wasn’t much choice.” Rey nods, and he gestures to all the pieces representing the First Order. “We want them out. We want to clean the ranks, pick out anyone who can be swayed to see our side, and get rid of the rest.” He swipes at the board with a hand, knocking them over and sweeping them to the side. “But we need to replace them- we can’t just topple the government, it would be chaotic. Fortunately, I have  _ all the power _ , so I can do things like….” He starts setting up different pieces in the ring closest to the edge of the board, the cast-off First Order officers blinking out of existence. “Give free reign to sovereign planets to choose their governors and rulership.” He finishes the outer ring and starts filling the next one in. “Have them create councils among sectors and systems, begin building a democracy. Eventually,” he draws a line under a group of people, “we establish a galactic legislature. Like the Senate from the pre-Empire, only… with failsafes in place, to prevent another Palpatine. I know my mother and Mon Mothma had started developing some, for the New Republic, but I don’t know that they were ever finished or implemented. By the time the Senate is established, the last of the old guard will be gone. Ultimately, the Supreme Leader will be nothing but a figurehead, and I’ll make sure we abolish even that.” He knocks over the piece in the center of the board. “We give power back to the people.”

“It won’t even be the First Order anymore,” Rey says, picking up the discarded chalk and drawing a smile on the cartoon of Ben next to the downed Grimtaash.

He nods, and the Grimtaash flickers away, leaving only a smiling cartoon on the board full of other pieces. “That’s the point. The First Order should never have existed, and I intend to wipe it away.”

 

When they land, Ben turns to Rey and says, “When we walk through the palace, I want you to keep your chin up and eyes forward, don’t pay attention to anyone.” She’s about to ask him why, but then the transport door opens, and he stands straighter and walks out with purpose. Rey trails behind, trying to mimic his square-shouldered stance and quick stride, but she’s sure she just looks ridiculous. People bow their heads as Rey and Ben pass, and she tries not to look at them, not to let them distract her. They step into an elevator, at last, and he closes his eyes, relaxing and letting out a sigh.

The apartment it releases them into is more subdued than the throne room, but Rey can still tell it was made up with Snoke in mind- it’s harsh and dramatic, done up in reds and blacks, and she wrinkles her nose in distaste. Ben waves his hand lazily and one wall of panels sinks into the floor, revealing floor-to-ceiling windows that show her a dazzling view of the planet beyond, broad expanses of forest stretching out for miles below. They’re on a mountainside, she thinks, and she can see more mountains in the distance, jagged blue peaks marking the horizon.

A soft  _ whump _ behind her pulls Rey’s attention from the windows, and she turns to see Ben collapsed onto one of the long couches in the center of the room, his face slack and pale all of a sudden. The air crackles with an abrupt sense of panic and disbelief, and Rey crosses the room, sitting carefully next to him.

“I’m the Supreme Leader,” he says, dully, and Rey furrows her brow in confusion and nods slightly. This makes his eyes snap to her, and he says, “Rey, I- I killed him.” He drops his head into his hands. “Oh, stars, I  _ killed _ him.”

Rey has no idea what to do, but she can  _ feel _ him starting to unravel, the moment of respite allowing his mind to catch up to everything that’s happened, and everything that had been keeping him together, the urgency of retreat, gone. The cracks in him are showing, so she reaches out on impulse, pressing a hand to his spine in a motion she remembers of comfort.

“You did the right thing,” she says, and she must be lucky, because he turns into her, pressing his face into the crook of her neck and tangling his hands in the loose cloth draped over her shoulders. She hesitates a moment, but wraps her arms around him, curling her fingers into the rough, thick cloth of his tunic. He still smells like smoke and blood from the battle, she notes absently, as he trembles in her hold. “He can’t hurt you anymore. Things are going to be better, now. You did the right thing.”

“I know,” he says, choked. “I know, I just- I never thought- he always seemed invincible.” Rey can see in his mind’s eye the towering hologram of Snoke, the endless ocean of his power, and she remembers how mightily she struggled against his hold, but it was like walking through a sandstorm, and she has never felt more helpless in her life, and she can’t imagine what it was like for Ben, having Snoke with him, around him, over him, his whole life. She feels the same fierce, vengeful rage she did in the throne room- how dare he, how dare he, how  _ dare _ that  _ monster _ -

“Rey,” Ben says, quietly, and she realizes she’s the one shaking now, with rage. “Rey, it’s all right.”

“It’s  _ not _ ,” she insists.

He lifts his head from her shoulder and brushes loose hair back from her face. “If we let ourselves get caught up in anger over how much the other has been hurt, that’s all we’ll ever do.”

Rey can never quite wrap her mind around how short the time is since they met, considering how deeply, how intimately, she knows him. It feels sometimes as if her whole life was prelude to this feeling, this bone-deep certainty that she would burn whole worlds to the ground in order to keep him from harm, and he would do the same for her, and yet she doesn’t know if she could even call him a friend. But he’s here, and he’s hers, whatever it is, exactly, that means.

“Let the past die?” she offers, with a slight smile.

“Precisely.”

 

They rest, and they plan- well, Ben plans. Rey mostly just listens, agrees, asks him to explain about half the things he talks about. He’s patient, and so smart it’s almost intimidating, but he listens to her just as intently, and every once in a while she makes an observation that gives him pause, and then he’ll have to go back and reconsider other pieces of the puzzle to make everything fit together right.

“This is going to take years,” he says, exhausted, sitting back hard on the couch. “Decades. We may not live to see it all end.” He scrubs a hand over his face, and it’s so late, and Rey feels the fatigue down to her very bones, but she reaches up from where she’s sprawled on the floor to pat his knee in comfort.

“One thing at a time. What’s the first thing you have to do?”

“No more stormtroopers,” he says, immediately, and it’s not something that had come up at all, but Rey sits up immediately. “I never liked it,” he says to Rey, blase, “it’s impractical, and unsustainable, it-”

Ben stops and seems to realize, abruptly, that he’s Supreme Leader now, that he doesn’t have to disguise his motivations or put forth a front for anyone anymore, and he softens. “It’s not right,” he says, quieter. “They’re children, not soldiers.”

Rey thinks of Finn, thinks of him and millions of others like him, free, and her heart feels so full and proud she can hardly parse it. She was  _ right _ , Ben is a good man, and she wants nothing more than to fly to Ahch-to and crow to Luke that it didn’t go the way she thought, it went  _ better _ .

She realizes she’s smiling at him, broad and thrilled and foolish, and she can’t untangle everything he’s feeling in the Force, but then suddenly it’s gone, and he’s drawn away from her, and he’s standing and disabling the holoscreens and datapads he’d been using, gathering things and busying himself.

“We should sleep,” he says. “Not, uh. There’s a spare bedroom, that way, you can take it, I’m sure you don’t want to sleep in the Supr- Snoke’s bed, but we should sleep, we have to speak to the officers in the morning, start- there’s a lot to do tomorrow.”

He disappears down a hallway without a second glance and she’s left staring after him, bewildered.

 

“Ending the stormtrooper program?” splutters an admiral.

”That’s right,” Kylo says evenly, when the chatter has subsided. He surveys the room full of First Order officers, seated at a long table stretched out before him. Rey thinks she’s never seen a bleaker gathering in her life- everyone is in blacks and charcoal grays, and she would give anything for someone to wear a color that isn’t  _ red _ . “We’ll return the children to their families.”

“And what of the full soldiers?” calls out a gruff-voiced general. “Are we to send our entire army home to their families?”

The sneer in his tone is obvious, and Rey hears the sharp intake of breath from Kylo as he fights back anger, so she steps in. “They’ll be given a choice,” she says, projecting her voice to be heard, immensely proud of how steady and even it comes out. “They can stay on as soldiers, or take other positions within the infrastructure, or be honorably discharged.”

The room erupts into clamorous chaos once more.

“Are you suggesting disarmament?” shouts an officer, and other voices echo him.

“How are we to fight without a military?” yells another over the din.

“Who is there left to fight?” Rey asks. “The Resistance is a dozen starry-eyed freedom fighters trapped in an abandoned mine. They’re under siege as we speak, and they will either die or surrender. The war is over.” They don’t need to know the Resistance is long gone from that mine, that her friends have already escaped.

“Do you really believe there won’t be resistance on conquered planets?” snaps an older man, to Kylo’s right.

Kylo takes a deep breath, collecting himself, and straightens. “I believe that there will be unrest on conquered planets, yes,” he says, in a commanding voice. “But I do not believe that military might is the way to settle this unrest. Ruling by fear is as easy as it is ineffective- it costs us as officers, as leaders, nothing, but the toll it takes on the people under us is incomprehensible, both financially and in lives. There will be unrest, and we will respond to it with solutions. If people rise up because they’re hungry, rather than punishing them for wanting food, we will find it for them. If they strike out because their children are ill, we heal them. If they have a need, we fill it, and foster loyalty by serving the people we rule, rather than subjugating them.” Kylo casts his eyes over the assemblage, who are all fixed on him silently, some staring in surprise, some in narrow-eyed hate. “The First Order was conceived as a conquering force, but who thought of what to do with the galaxy once we owned it? Not one of you here is suited to govern. Civilians aren’t soldiers, and societies can’t be run like militaries. Snoke is dead, and I am Supreme Leader now, and that means a new era. It means change. It means we turn towards the future.”

Rey doesn’t know anything about government- the power structures of her world for nineteen years had been founded on who had the most food, and the idea of governing a whole galaxy is too staggeringly vast for her to even begin pulling it apart, but she believes that Ben wants the galaxy to be better off for his hand in it, and she believes that the goodness in him is free to lead now, without Snoke’s influence. She believes in Ben, so she trusts that what he’s saying is something she can believe in, too, and she lifts her chin and fixes a challenging stare on the ranks of the First Order, daring any of them to argue.

“Long live the Supreme Leader,” she says, and the response is slow to come, hesitant, confused. Rey reaches towards Ben, and his resolve only strengthens. She doesn’t understand, but she’s put her faith in him. “Long live the Supreme Leader!”

 

“Ugh, are you still reading those?” Ben asks with a hint of derision, tapping a finger on the spine of the Jedi text Rey has been scowling at for the past hour.

They’ve settled into a kind of rhythm, the two of them- Ben is working day in and day out to try and wrestle the upper ranks of the First Order into something resembling the kind of structure he wants, and Rey is grappling just as hard with figuring out how to even begin learning about the Jedi.

“I’m certainly trying,” she replies. “They’re not exactly thrilling.”

He sits down next to her, peering over her shoulder. “Do you need help?” he asks. “I know these books back and forwards, I read them enough times, and it’d be a welcome change from committees and hearings and organization.”

Rey chews on her lip, and then closes the book, settling it on her lap. “No, but- I wanted to talk to you.”

“All right,” he says, cautiously.

Rey has rehearsed this in her mind a dozen times, and she squares her shoulders as she faces him. “I’m going on a trip,” she says, and he’s looking at her with alarm. “I’ll come back,” she assures him. “But I want to go seek out old Jedi sites.”

“Why?” He sounds genuinely bewildered. “You agreed with me that the Jedi need to end.”

“That doesn’t mean they don’t have wisdom I can use. I have to learn how to use the Force.”

“I can teach you that,” he says, defensively. “You don’t have to leave.”

Rey fidgets. “I want to learn it on my own.”

“Why?” he demands.

“I just do!”

“That’s not a good enough reason,” he snaps, rising to his feet, and underneath the rising irritation she can sense a current of anxiety, a fear that she’s not going to return.

She takes a deep breath and tightens her grip on the text she was reading. “I have to be able to protect you,” she says, and it’s a struggle to get the words out, to voice her insecurity, but he’s always made her be honest with herself, and she owes him honesty in return. “I can’t- if all I ever learn is from you, I’ll never be stronger than you, and then what’s the point of me? Why have an attack dog that isn’t-”

“You’re not an attack dog,” he says, quickly, interrupting her, eyes suddenly wide. “Rey, why would you- you’re  _ not _ a soldier.”

Rey hesitates, because she didn’t expect this. “But that’s- that’s why I’m here, isn’t it? The Emperor had Vader, Snoke had you, you have me. I’m meant to fight for you.”

He looks  _ horrified _ , and she doesn’t know why, but she wants to take her words and sweep them back into herself, just to wipe that look off his face.

“Rey,  _ no _ ,” he says, soft and a little despondent. “You’re- we’re  _ equals _ . You’re not a tool, you’re my... we stand together. That’s how this is going to work. The two of us. Together. Balance.”

Rey feels wrong-footed, exposed under his gaze the way only he can make her. “I don’t know anything about this. Ruling the galaxy. I’m a  _ scavenger _ , I’m nothing-”

“You’re not,” he insists.

“But what use am I to you?” she demands.

“You’re good,” he says, simply, dropping to his knees in front of her, resting his hands on the book as if he’s swearing an oath. “You see the people for what they are, you  _ care _ . All the political strategy in the world is meaningless without someone to care about the people, and that’s you. It has to be you.”

He’s staring up at her with that same imploring gaze as he had in the throne room, all that time ago that was really only weeks, and she still hasn’t found a name for the way it makes her heart pound in her ears. “I still want to study the Force on my own,” she hears herself saying, distantly. “You can’t know everything and I want to learn.” Rey ducks her head, unable to keep looking him in the eyes, but she lets go of the book and squeezes his hand. “And I’m coming back, I promise. I won’t go too far.”

“All right,” he says. “Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “I’ll… what do you want to learn?”

For an hour, they pick out places on a star chart for her to go, historical sites and old temples, places he went with Luke and places they never got to. She picks three for her first trip, close by, some temple ruins and an archive.

“Don’t be gone too long,” he says, and it’s brusque, but she knows him enough by now to know that it’s hiding something softer, that he’s still terrified she won’t come back at all.

“I won’t,” she says, with a reassuring smile, and she never thought she would be the one to leave, but it’s different when she has no intention of staying away.

“Good,” he says, and she could swear his ears are going red under his hair as he averts his gaze. “The galaxy needs its queen.”

 

The word  _ queen _ settles into Rey’s mind and won’t leave the entire next day as she prepares to leave and boards her little one-man fighter. Ben isn’t there when she departs, but she knew he would be busy shouting at admirals all day so she said her goodbyes to him that morning.

Is she his queen? The question won’t stop plaguing her as she plots her lightspeed course and stares at the text on a datapad telling her about her destination, completely failing to take in any of the information.

They’re not, well. It’s not as if she  _ doesn’t _ have feelings for him- he’s so, so handsome, and she spends a lot of time pulling herself away from thoughts of the softness of his lips. They can read each other’s  _ minds _ , for goodness sake, she’s never had that kind of connection with anyone.

He overturned the galaxy for her. How could she not be willing to love him, given half a chance?

And the ‘queen’ bit- that’s her chance, isn’t it? It’s roundabout, but it isn’t as if it’s ambiguous. He said she was the galaxy’s queen, but, well, that makes her his, too, doesn’t it? She hopes it does. She wants it to.

Rey doesn’t have a great frame of reference for romantic relationships- stories, mostly, and her life feels more like a story than anything real, sometimes. Her eyes settle on a word in the middle of the screen while her mind wanders, drifting idly through thoughts of love and devotion.

She would be able to touch him, she realizes. It’s not as if she doesn’t, now, but- there would be a difference, she thinks, between the paradigm they have, cautious and brief contact, as if they’re each afraid of the other’s rejection, and what they would have if they were together like that. She thinks about her head on his shoulder, running her fingers through her hair while he talks, the quiet comfort of holding hands.

(She thinks about kissing him, about his mouth on her neck, about her hands on his body, about-)

Rey knows her face is red as she shakes her head and focuses back on what she was reading.

 

The ruins are a great, echoing space, overrun with vines and teeming with life, and Rey feels it humming in her bones as she walks in. It feels like she’s just outside a roomful of people, like she could close her eyes and hear everyone who had called this place home. She thinks about stopping in the high-ceilinged hall she first enters, but that feels like it would be too much, so she keeps walking, tracing her fingers over murals on the walls as she goes. Eventually, she finds herself in a cramped room with one high window, and something tells her that a student lived here, once, generations ago, someone like her, someone just starting to learn, so she settles  against the wall under the window, legs stretched out in front of her, head tipped back against the cool, ancient stones, closes her eyes, and reaches out.

The sun is gone by the time she opens her eyes again, a thin strip of moonlight falling onto the floor from the window, and she feels relaxed and connected like she never has, so she doesn’t want to leave. It’s not as if Rey hasn’t slept in much less comfortable conditions, so she pulls her traveling cloak over herself and settles her bag under her head and drifts off.

Her dreams are shot through with anxiety, with watching a ship fly off, over and over, and she can’t quite fixate on what it looks like, because one minute it’s a big freighter, but then it’s a star yacht, but then it’s a one-man fighter, and for as many times as she’s dreamed of the day her parents left, she knows this isn’t that, this is something else, this isn’t hers. She wakes shivering, covered in cold sweat, weak dawn light filtering through the dust in the air of her little room.

She stays there for the rest of the day, trying to shake off the sense of unease from the night by reading the Jedi texts. It’s a little bit easier, something in the location and all the ruins having shifted her perspective just a little bit, but she can’t make herself focus, so she puts the book back in her bag and explores the ruins more thoroughly.

They’re bigger than she thought, initially, as she wanders through crumbling hallways and overgrown courtyards. A lot of what she couldn’t see flying in was hidden by how much the forest had retaken it, and the new life of plant growth mingles with the ghosts of Jedi life long past. It creates an intricately woven tapestry that makes Rey feel almost like an intruder, so she treads carefully as not to disturb it.

Eventually she finds a staircase leading down, and it takes her into the cool darkness of a cellar, but the further she goes the more she feels that same creeping, tugging sensation as the cave on Ahch-To, and just before she steps off the last stair she hesitates and reaches out with her feelings. The quiet, vibrant life she’d felt above doesn’t exist here, it faded away as she descended, and no matter how hard she tries she can’t quite find it again. This place is Dark, she knows it, and the combination of her bad dream and a sense of foreboding curling deep in her stomach tells her to turn around, so she does.

It’s not till she’s back in the sunlight, shivering in remembered chill, that she realizes how cold and afraid she was, and she can’t shake the sense that something awful had happened there, long ago, and if she’d pressed too far, something awful would have happened again. Maybe Ben knows more about it- she’ll ask when she gets back.

The archive is on a desert planet, and the sight of so much sand makes something in Rey twist up tight and stick there, like an elastic stretched to its limit. The wind blows and for a moment, rubbing grit out of her eyes, she’s struck with the fear that she’s going to open them and find that everything was just a dream after all. She grips her lightsaber tight, running her thumb over the ridges on its hilt like a talisman, and tells herself, over and over,  _ this is real _ .

The archive is old, as well, and the few holoscreens that aren’t blasted to bits or just dead from age are filled with piecemeal and corrupted data. It takes Rey hours just to pull what information she can from it, and her head hurts by the end, eyes swimming from staring at the flickering light for so long. There’s nothing more for her there, so she leaves as soon as she’s done, charting a course for the final stop, and it’s not until the cold darkness of the desert at nighttime is receding behind her that the knot of anxiety in her chest loosens and falls away.

 

The second set of ruins has an enormous snake living in it.

Rey discovers this when she turns around to see its eyes glittering in the half light, hears a warning hiss. A chill runs up her spine and her hand goes to her lightsaber, which makes the snake rear back.

Before she draws it, though, she remembers something she read about in one of the sacred texts, something about taming animals, and she closes her eyes, planting her feet and reaching out with the Force.

It gets easier, every time she does it, like stretching a muscle she just discovered, that had been long stiff. By now she only has to think about it for a half second and it’s there, all the life of the planet humming at her fingertips, webs of energy woven together and her tangled up in it.

The snake is wary, defensive- she can’t quite read its mind, not the way she can a person’s, definitely not the way she can Ben’s, but she can feel it, images and sensations more than words. It wants her to leave- that much is clear- but it seems to recognize that she’s a threat to it. It would rather she left than fought it, it doesn’t want to fight, it-

It’s protecting something, she realizes. A nest.

Rey opens her eyes. “I won’t hurt your babies,” she says to it, hands held out palm-first in a gesture of calm. The snake bobs its head, suspicious. “I’m just here to visit,” she says, voice low and soothing. “I just want to look around, and then I’ll go.” It hisses again, raising the spines around its head, and Rey resists the urge to take a step back. “I promise I won’t hurt you or your nest, but I’ll leave now if you don’t want me here.” The snake narrows its eyes at her, and Rey holds its gaze for a long second, but it doesn’t back down. “All right,” she says, bowing her head and retreating. “I’ll go. My ship is that way, I’ll leave now.” Rey walks backwards out of the ruins, the snake following after her, until she reaches the end of the ruins, and then it stops, staring at her while she continues to the clearing where she left her ship.

She stops and presses her forehead  against the cold metal of her ship and laughs, giddy and breathless, almost dizzy with relief. She  _ did  _ it, she used the Force, she was- fuck, that felt  _ amazing _ .

Rey can barely bring herself to be upset about missing out on most of the second temple she’s so excited about communicating with the snake- she hoists herself hurriedly into her fighter and starts flipping switches for take-off, excited to get back and tell Ben about it.

 

He’s bent over a datapad when she bursts into the room, not bothering to knock, and his eyes go wide when he jerks up to look at her.

“Rey,” he says, half wonder, and she doesn't need to read his mind to hear the  _ I didn't really think you'd come back _ he isn't saying.

“Did you miss me?” she asks brightly, and she’s fully expecting him to roll his eyes, but he doesn’t.

“Of course I did,” he says, instead, and that throws her off for a moment, the way it makes something soft surge up in her chest. She smiles broadly and it doesn’t leave her face the whole time she’s telling him about the trip.

 

In the small hours of the morning, Rey twists in her bed sheets, jolting awake. She can feel the edges of her dream fading, unremarkable, but beyond that the echo of something that makes her gut twist, makes her want to curl in on herself and hide.

She closes her eyes and focuses in, catching hold of that echo and following it, to where she already knows it’ll end up- Ben, the dark part of his mind, the place Snoke lived, the place he keeps all his hurt and fear, the place he tries desperately to hide from her. He’s had another nightmare, and even from here she can feel him trying to fight down panic.

Enough is enough, she thinks, and swings her legs over the side of the bed.

She knocks before opening his door, and though he doesn’t respond she knows he’s awake on the other side, can sense his unsettled mind still struggling with itself. He’s sprawled out on the bed, face down, and she can see his shoulders heaving, the light sheen of sweat on them. He doesn’t look at her but casts an arm out in a weak Force-push, more symbolic than anything, as she glances it aside easily.

“Go away,” he says, muffled by his pillows.

“No,” she tells him, coming to sit on the edge of his bed. He lifts his head enough to glare at her, but his eyes are red-rimmed and she reaches out to push sweaty hair away from his face. He jerks back and rolls so his back is to her. “You had a nightmare,” she says.

“Go back to bed.”

“I can’t, your nightmares keep me awake too.”

His shoulders go tense. “I’m sorry, Rey.”

She trails her fingers over the line of his arm and he shivers. “It’s not your fault.”

“I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Rey hums, a neutral acknowledgement, and then tugs the blankets down, settling in behind him, her forehead pressed to his back. She can still feel his cold sweat, sticky on her skin, but Rey lived in the desert for too long to be bothered by that. With one finger she traces the line of his spine, up and down, the barest ghost of a touch, just to remind him she’s there.

“What are you afraid of?” she asks, quietly, mostly to herself.

“Luke,” he says. He doesn’t elaborate, but she understands. Touch always amplifies the bond between them, and the nightmare still hangs heavy in the air around him, so it doesn’t take much effort for her to untangle the web of energy into images and feelings- a buzzing green glow, bewildered terror, heartbreak and self-loathing.

Her finger stills on his skin and she has to take a deep breath to reign in the dizzying rage that rolls through her. She wishes, sometimes, in dark and awful moments, that she’d managed to kill him on that island.

“You fought Luke,” Ben says, with a quiet sort of awe. “On the island, you’re remembering it.”

“I did,” she confirms, trailing her knuckles over a thin, faded scar on his shoulder blade. “And I’d do it again.”

“What did he do to you?”

Rey blinks, her hand going still again. “He didn’t do anything to me.”

“Why did you fight him?”

Rey lifts herself up on her elbow to look at his face, but he’s turned away and she can’t see more than the point of his nose and curve of his cheekbone, so she drops back down and moves in a little closer.

“Because of what he did to  _ you _ , Ben.” She closes her eyes and remembers the moment, all her incandescent fury,  _ Did you try to murder him? _ , lashing out, Luke on the ground in front of her, prone, vulnerable, not defeated but surrendering.

Abruptly, Ben turns over and wraps his arms around her, pulling her close, curling his body around hers, their legs tangling together. The nightmare is starting to dissipate, rapidly, from what she can sense of him, chased off by a sense of wonder and adoration and comfort, and Rey presses in closer, delighting in the surge of feeling.

She falls asleep like that, held fast in his arms, but the next morning he’s gone by the time she wakes, so she returns to her own bed that night. He has another nightmare two nights later, and then another four nights after that, and each of those times she goes to his room and crawls into his bed and chases away the darkness.

After the third time, she goes to his bed instead of her own at the beginning of the night, and does the same every night after that. Three weeks pass, weeks of Rey in his bed every night, before he has another nightmare, and he tells her, quietly, in the hushed secrecy of the drifting hours, that he’s never had that many nights of peace in a row before.

So she stays.


End file.
